The Devourer Of Here

The product of a conjuring gone horribly awry, the Devourer hungers, and it hungers not for anything of this world, nor of the next..

Full Description
The five senses of mortal man cannot percieve the Devourer, for it is not a part of the reality of Man. The Devourer lives in the bizzare realm-that-is-not on the other side of the weft of space and time, a place that Man cannot go, nor percieve, nor even imagine. However, it is not without its effects on this side of reality, for wherever it passes, gravity changes strangely, as it presses back against the nothingness that births it.

Additional Information

Excerpted from the Journals of Ralthok the Shaper :

“Ye gods of Darknesse… what have I wrought? E’en in the grip of the visions from the Desert Bloom’s elixer, such a simple thing should not have gone so awry. To call a minor thing such as a succubi, and create this… the gods of Blackness must have chosen to shape this. Surely it cannot be my fault. The hunger of the elixer cannot possibly be sufficient to warp my casting, not so much that my laboratory itself is swallowed, along with my cohorts!

My grimoire without it, I can do nothing. I must flee, and hope another can stop this… thing.”

Hallucinating and hungering from the effects of a semi-magical drug, Ralthok’s summoning ritual was, indeed, warped, his own wild set of mind combining with the unnaturally awakened thoughts of his friends to weave the Devourer.

A creature of indeterminate shape, the Devourer lurks on the outside of the universe, and when it hungers, it eats the only thing available for it to feed upon - reality itself. Whatever exists where it chews upon is lost to the Devourer, and a ragged hole is torn in the naturally folded fabric of reality. Abhorring this, reality swiftly, but not instantly, seals against itself, two places becoming, for a time, one, and the sated Devourer is shunted aside, to another place. When one steps across the line where the Bite of the Devourer begins, one is seamlessly transported to wherever reality has sealed against itself, for there is no space between it. In time, however, this ‘scar’ upon reality heals, the bitten space peeling back away from the merged place, though now, the space between the marks of the bite is gone, as if it never was at all. Any matter at the site of the bite also winds up on the ‘underside’ of reality, where it may or may not be able to continue to exist. It is most likely it will evaporate into nothing, upon a pyre of inverted physics.

To effect the Devourer with conventional magics or most technology is entirely impossible - to reach the Devourer, the effect must be able to strike through the space time itself. This limits to dimension-effecting spells, gravity effects, etc.

The Devourer has no intelligence. It is simply occasionally hungry. It’s ‘bite’ may be variable, from man-sized, to city sized, depending on the needs of the plot.

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It smells suspiciously like it was inspired by something from a certain video game, but I like the twists you've got in it - I could see it 'chomping' two different realities and creating a temporary fusion point...

Well, that's not entirely true. Depending on how one defines spacetime, and views the Devourer, each bite from a particular spacetime could be relocated into another spacetime, resulting in a 'dimension shift', if you want to think of it that way.

I like this extradimensional horror. The write up is nicely done, the descriptions help capture some of the flavor of the critter. There are not a great number of dramtic hooks for the critter, but it seems to be a horrific force of natura really... so most plots will deal with surviving the thing.

This is a horror submission, not your normal fantasy monster. There is no fighting it. All your mighty powers are nothing to it. You are a victim no matter your powers, thus the fear/ horror quality. Imagine you are in a huge castle and you are carrying the magic mcguffin. It engulfs the castle but because of the hypertopography is unable to eat the entire thing... so it pops up sending psuedopods down hallways, out of walls/ up from rugs, and other such... causing the character to run and dodge for its life. (Or give up the magic McGuffin which they worked so hard to get...) The character is working up a sweat trying to stay alive. And others are getting chomped just getting in the way.

Some said it was too short. Length is never a criteria for quality. It is a complete post that needs little else to be this darn good.

The whole mechanism of consuming reality is darn interesting, note how easily you can erase parts of the game world, allow travel where one wasn't possible, and then put something new into place. Question: once the reality 'heals', what will be found in the place? Is it simply 'nothing', so a giant hole that may be filled by whatever is around, or more interestingly, something might be created in the place, as a residuum of original creation - earth, rocks... maybe more... :)

Well, Manfred, I had originally envisioned -truely- nothing, such that the edges of where the bite were before now reach each other directly. That is,

Old: |_______|
Bit: |__xxx__|
New: |____|

Elsewise, I would patch the hole over with 'void' or 'vacuum' or 'outer space', and let physics take its course from there - Collapsing chasms, inrushing air, etc. Also note that there is nothing stopping the GM from putting the other end of the bite in various bad places - It does not even have to be a large bite to be horrific for the players and their surrounding, if the other end of the hole is somewhere like the bottom of an ocean, the heart of a sun, or for that matter, a hell-analogue.

Oooh.... I like this. Boy, do I like this. I don't think I'd use it directly, in that my PCs would never actually be in danger of being Bitten, but there are the fun after-effects, which are the biggest draw for me. And excuse to mess with geography, physics, connect places that shouldn't be connected, explain "freak magic portals"... how can I resist? I wonder if it screws up time when it eats, too... That's just begging to be exploited. I also wonder if it would affect people's memories? If reality seals itself over the gap where something was, might it cease to have been?

a) One of the PCs carries something that attracts the Devourer. It is not so obvious that the Devourer can be lead directly to it. It starts by a sphere of odd gravitation rolling past them occassionally. Rocks suddenly fly into the air for a moment and fall back to the ground. Anything else loose in the area the Devourer "passes" does the same. The Devourer is basically doing a "fly by" close to our PCs reality in search for the PCs item throwing things askew. After a bit of this the Devourer gets antsy and starts taking bites out of reality around the PCs. If in town it doesn't take long for them to be viewed as being cursed or whatever else. Devourer could give up or PCs can figure it out.

b) I was thinking that perhaps the removal of reality by the devourer may even remove that place from all reality for all time like your typical time travel conundrums. Is that part of reality removed like it never was? Would history change or would the current memories of the PCs have blank spaces where reality was removed. A sword they got in a cave that was eaten by the Devourer. When they think about how they got the sword, they have no idea.

With (b), that could cause major problems. You'd get self-contradicting situations (paradox). If the cave was removed from time both past and present, then how did the PCs acquire the sword in the first place?

Karmic Overdraft

As population increases, animal souls are promoted to human before they are spiritually advanced enough in terms of impulse control, etc.: this shouldn't have happened, but karmic progression is automatic, after all--it's a force of nature. But the 'animalization' of humankind bodes ill for civilization.